1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network printing apparatus and, more particularly to a network printing apparatus for processing print requests transmitted according to a plurality of protocols.
2. Description of the Related Art
For an access control system in a conventional network printing apparatus, the network printing apparatus discriminates a specific user or host computer, and an access system is limited every user or host computer.
An example of the network printing apparatus is disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. Hei. 7-104955. In the publication, information for discriminating host computers is registered in advance in the printing apparatus. The apparatus compares the output information received thereby with the registered discriminating information to judge whether or not the host computer is registered. The apparatus processes or casts the received output information on the basis of the result of the judgement. That is, the access control is carried out in this way.
A remote printing system is disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. Hei. 6-349436. In the printing system, information for identifying users is registered in advance in a table. When an issuer of a print request received is contained in the table, the print request is processed.
However, those conventional techniques are adaptable for only a case where a print request issued according to a specific protocol is processed, and can not be applied to a system which processes print requests issued according to different protocols.